


Of Man's First Disobedience

by togina



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1930s, Angst, M/M, Priest!Steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-07
Updated: 2013-07-07
Packaged: 2017-12-17 23:13:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/873059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togina/pseuds/togina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve is months away from his 25th birthday, when he will take his vows and finalize his entry into the priesthood. Then one night, he finds a young man in his sanctuary - but can he accept Bucky? Can he find peace for himself?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Man's First Disobedience

**Author's Note:**

> You have been warned, this is horribly depressing. It's based off this prompt: http://stevebucky-fest.dreamwidth.org/307.html?thread=137779#cmt137779
> 
> Steve is a priest, and though I don't pinpoint the time, I would guess it's around 1931/2.

Steve was meant to be a priest. When he was small and sickly, and no one had believed that he would grow up at all, much less to be so strong, his mother had brought him to church every evening before she had to leave for work. He knew the mass before he started school, carried the wooden rosary Father Kindall had given him everywhere, reciting Ave Marias and Pater Nosters as he struggled to pull air into his weak lungs. He had slept on the pews sometimes, when his mother was late at work and the streets of the Tenderloin district were no place for a little boy. One day, she murmured to him while they were kneeling at prayer, one day he would stand up there in front of the congregation, the words of the Angelus, the teaching of scripture already on his tongue.

When his mother hadn't come back one night at all – she died, Father Kindall told him the next morning, of a wasting sickness that Steve had never glimpsed, unless it was from the bruises on her face or the distance in her eyes – the friars had taken him in, brushing away his tears with bromides about God's plan. They had allowed him to attend the parish school, praised his work in catechism class, his diligence as an altar boy. They had gathered donations for him to attend seminary, and the instructors there nodded approvingly when Steve kept vigil through the night, on his knees before God, the old rosary in his hands. Everyone knew that Steve was meant to be a priest, and now he had returned to Our Lady of Sorrows, waiting for his twenty-fifth birthday and his ordination.

Waiting for God to cleanse his soul, to root out the sin that lingered in his nature, hoping the vows would render him as innocent as others believed he was. God was just and fair, and Steve had to ask if he hoped to receive. It was late, after midnight, but not too late for prayer. Folding his hands over the rosary on his belt, Steve hurried out of the friary and toward the church next door, blinking at the wash of electric lights, wondering how shops managed to keep their signs lit when men were standing in line to feed their families. A few women called out, mocking, their lips bright red under the glare, their skirts above the knee. God had strengthened him against such temptations; Steve had never been constrained by Adam's weakness.

Despite the garish displays outside, the inside of the church was dark, the air dusty and cool, more familiar to Steve than the forgotten sound of his mother's voice. He could easily make his way to the steps below the altar, moving confidently down the aisle and toward the pulpit.

He would have made it to the altar, too, if he hadn't tripped over something kneeling between the pews and the lectern. Steve lost his footing and came down hard on the flagstones. Though from the grunt of pain, the intruder wasn't much better off. They both scrambled to their feet, loud in the echoes of the sanctuary, and Steve let go of his rosary in favor of raising his fists, the tensed muscles bringing back memories of allies and bullies, of pride when he got a hit or saved a girl from unwanted attention. Pride. Even in God's house, Steve was tempted to sin, to defend the few candlesticks and censors they had left after the Crash, instead of giving himself up to God's will. He dropped his hands just as a match struck and he caught a glimpse of pale eyes and dark hair under a flat cap, inky stubble framing a mouth that flickered and vanished as the match burned low. No one moved to light a second match. But then, nobody made a move for the candlesticks, either.

“Who are you?” Steve demanded, though he did not move toward the intruder. “What are you looking for? Sanctuary?”

He could feel the other man's rasping laugh, caught a second glimpse of a face twisted in what might have been bitterness, or defeat. The flame died, but the orange glow of a cigarette remained, and Steve used it to map where the lips would be, the straight nose, the rest of a face in the darkness. “What are you looking for?” he asked again, whispering so that it did not carry to the rafters.

“Absolution.” The voice was soft, weighted with things Steve did not know. Unfamiliar fingers knocked into his shoulder, scrabbling across to feel for his collar. Steve could retrace their path, each press as they skimmed the cotton over his collarbone, up to where the white material met his neck. Another laugh. “Do you sell that here, Father? Two dollars for a pardon? Three, to get out of purgatory a little quicker?”

Steve had been trained for this. He was only months away from his vows. He knew how to sit with a man on the harsh wood of their pews, to kneel with children after their first confession and recite Ave Marias and Pater Nosters until his knees ached. The smell of tobacco so foreign to the church filled the air as he stuttered, “I'm not a priest yet. Not til Christmas.” The fingers were still tracing his collar, and Steve could feel the starched edge press against his throat when he swallowed. “You don't have to call me 'Father'.”

“What do I call you, then?” They were still in the dark, in a cloud of smoke and the cool, thick air of the church. It might have been a dream, the church Steve had been raised in suddenly another country.

“Steve. For St. Stephen.” Steve was still talking, though he wasn't sure what he was saying. The fingers had moved to explore the stiff wool of his waistcoat, the cotton sleeves of his black shirt. How could he be talking, when he couldn't breathe? “I was born on his feast day.”

“The martyr.” Steve nodded, startled. “With the face of an angel,” added the voice, and the fingers moved upwards to verify. Steve caught them when they danced from his cheekbone to the bridge of his nose, folded them back against a palm more callused than his own. Dream or not, God was watching. God knew what was in Steve's heart, even though Steve himself thought he might never understand.

“And what do I call you?” he returned, moving easily toward the altar without letting go of the stranger's hand. The soles of his shoes were so worn they made almost no noise on the flagstones; the stranger was equally silent, no more than soft exhales and the embers of a cigarette.

“That depends on who you want. Yasha? Jamie? Barnes?” His voice was different than Steve's, but not unfamiliar. Sharper, denser in some places and lighter in others, but Steve was willing to bet they were both Tenderloin boys. Raised under electric lights and in alleys that smelled of urine and perfume, acting as promoters for women who paid them in nickels to find men – boys, really, hayseed in their hair and eyes wide – who hadn't learned yet where they were headed, and to tell them how to get there.

Steve felt for the candles behind the lectern with his free hand. In a few months it would be his lectern, his congregation. Now, in the dark, he had only his hands, damp with sweat and curled over a stranger's.

“I want to know your name.”

“My name?” There was a peculiar pause: Steve was thinking that he would have to let go to light the candle, not thinking of why he had not let go already; what the stranger was thinking he did not guess. “Bucky. You can call me Bucky.”

Bucky pulled his hand away and Steve's chest tightened in something that was not disappointment. A moment later there was a scratch, the smell of sulfur, and a flame hovering near Steve's face. He held up the candle, meant for Lent, and it flared to life between them. “Huh, guess the old book was right,” Bucky teased, his smile as sharp and fleeting as his words, pale gaze wandering like his fingers over Steve's heated face.

Bucky's skin was lighter than his eyes, framed by hair and lashes the color of the charcoal Steve sometimes used to illustrate lessons for Sunday School, or to ruin his only copy of Milton. If Bucky looked like an angel, it was the angel who had stolen the light from heaven, who had fought God and lost.

“What have you done,” Steve wondered, “that you want absolution?” Brought on war in heaven, brought temptation into the world.

“Bless me, father,” Bucky intoned, crossing himself as irreverently as Steve had ever seen, “for I have sinned. . .aren't we supposed to be in a box for this?” The weary expression had been banished from his face, tucked away behind full lips and mirrored eyes.

Steve's vocation was to help Bucky, not to stand there with a candle like a fool. It was God's will that drew Steve to Bucky, that fueled Steve's desire to know the secrets in wintry eyes. Of course, he probably ought to at least sit down first. Tucking the candle into the nearest candlestick – reluctant to turn away from Bucky, as though the young man would disappear back into the dark that brought him – Steve dropped down to the steps leading toward the altar, nearly toppling over when they proved to be lower than he'd realized. Bucky landed gracefully beside him, one knee knocking into Steve's thigh, his cap off and twisted between two slender hands.

“End of the dream, have you heard?” Steve's confusion swirled around the way his eyes tracked Bucky's hands, how thin fingers slid toward wrists swallowed by white cuffs, too busy tightening his grip on his rosary to parse Bucky's words. “Prohibition?”

Steve struggled to regain control of his breathing, of how dry his mouth was, like dust in the air when it hadn't rained for weeks. “. . .And you've come to repent for-for drinking?”

When Bucky laughed, it carried no farther than Steve's ears, as though they were hidden even from the echoes of God in the rafters. “Stevie, you're pretty swell for a priest. How did you end up in these glad rags, anyway?” He rested his slim hand on Steve's knee and leaned in close, smelling faintly of exhaust and tobacco. And Steve could not have turned Bucky away for the world.

~*~

By the time Bucky left, the dawn followed close on his heels. The sky was nearly light, the streets silent as they only were after the night ended but before the milkman and the paperboys took their place. The city slept, for a few moments, and Steve knelt in one of the pews, pressing his own square fingers across his thigh, his collar, his nose, reaching for the ghost of Bucky's touch. He would pray tomorrow. He would ask God why He had brought Bucky into Steve's church, why He had made a man out of moonlight and the glow of a cigarette. Having promised himself this, Steve followed the city into sleep, woken only by the friars' arrival for the Angelus.

They nodded at him, their gazes full of approval. Soon Steve would be their priest, and they saw only a young man who had spent all night on his knees. Steve swallowed hard against his collar, and bowed his head to pray.

~*~

Steve had begun sleeping in the church. He tried to wedge his bulk – the body God had granted him, so unexpected, and so strange a miracle for a priest, to have the strength of an ox, another gift he did not understand – onto one of the pews before sleeping in the aisle, his cassock rolled up beneath his head. He was waiting for answers. He was waiting for God to grant him wisdom. He was waiting for Bucky, who only ever came at night, a silhouette in the dark.

The church was sanctuary, and Bucky was careful never to bring his gun beyond the doors. Steve never knew where he left it, never wanted to ask if it was only hidden under the farthest pew. If he did not know where the gun was, he did not need to know where the man who owned it had been.

They spoke of everything else, laying next to the altar, barely lit by the glow of the candles. Laying a few feet from the watchful eyes of their Lord, hanging in agony on the cross. When Bucky was pleased, when he smelled of the ocean and tilted his cap low over his face, they talked of who would win the Series – the Yankees or the Dodgers, never any other team, and Steve had learned more about baseball in the past month than he had known as a boy on the streets – and what would become of bootlegging when Prohibition was over. When Bucky stumbled in, his hands shaking, his breath redolent with liquor and smoke and laid down next to Steve as still as the grave, they spoke of good, of evil, of death. Of forgiveness.

Steve catalogued every place they touched, laying side by side: the warmth from Bucky's body like a brand through the black cotton of his shirt, the easy way the other man crooked his leg and rested it against Steve's. Bucky's leg was a solid weight against his, as though God had given Steve his body so that he could prop up Bucky when the other man was too tired to stand. Steve did not think of the way the blood fizzed through his body like illicit champagne when Bucky touched him. If he did not think it, it was not a sin. And if he was not sinning, then there was no reason to send Bucky away.

Bucky spoke with his hands, circling them around and curling them into fists and whispering stories against the novitiate's cheek until Steve could feel goosebumps raise wherever Bucky breathed. It had always been cold, in the church. Cold enough to make him ill for the first time in years, giving him chills and shivers, making his breath catch in his throat and his head spin. Cold enough to keep Bucky's hands in his own, because Steve wanted to protect Bucky. Wanted to comfort him. Steve _wanted_. . .

~*~

The church was a sanctuary. Had been Steve's sanctuary since the first “in nomine Patris,” all those years ago. Became Bucky's sanctuary, the night he fell through the doors, his grace gone, clutching his gun in his left hand and his shoulder with his right hand. Steve was on his feet and running down the aisle before he was aware that there was another shadow in the doorway, before the second gun came up and Steve had to duck and wrench the heavy, wooden door shut against the man that dared to disturb his peace. When no shots came through the window, Steve barred the door and crouched next to Bucky, who was breathing harshly and attempting to cover the hole in his left shoulder.

“Sorry. Sorry, Stevie,” the dark-haired man ground out, setting his gun down and trying to push it out of sight. The movement jarred his arm, and even in the faint candlelight his face was whiter than the Eucharist.

Steve pulled Bucky up, hurrying toward the back where they kept the holy water and altar boys' robes. If nothing else, he could clean the wound, bind it. He would keep Bucky safe. Bucky sat docilely while Steve eased him out of his suit jacket, unbuttoning the vest and shirt at the same time, laying him down on his own bloody clothes. Bucky's skin was lighter than Steve's, black hair dusted over his chest, body strong from the acrobatics his job required. The job Steve could not know about, the vocation that Bucky had been trained for, as Steve had been trained for his. Bucky was also a Tenderloin boy, but he had grown up with Gurrah Shapiro instead of Father Kindall. And now – now, Steve heard too much in the confessional, knew too many things about a man named Lepke and a syndicate that solved the mafia's most persistent problems, for a fee.

Steve didn't pray, didn't thank God that it had not been a corpse that fell into his church, didn't breathe until he had finished wrapping the bandage he'd torn out of a robe. The skin on Bucky's shoulder was soft, so different from the rough pads of his fingers and the fragile skin on the back of his hand. He did not realize, until Bucky reached for him, that he had been running his shaking fingers up and down Bucky's arm. With his good arm, he reached for Steve, sliding his hand over the collar and up into blond, disheveled hair.

“Hey, Stevie. Hush.” Steve folded down onto Bucky as though he had pushed a button, collapsing nearly on top of the other man. “Shh, Stevie.” Slim, familiar fingers carded through his hair, calming him. He could feel Bucky's heartbeat through the wool of his waistcoat, could feel Bucky's presence in a place he had only ever felt God's. And neither God nor Bucky stopped him from lifting his head and pressing his lips against lips that could have rallied the angels against their maker, could have thrown off the tyranny of heaven and caused the Fall.

~*~

It was October when Bucky asked if Steve had any oil. Naked, tucked between the altar and the watchful eyes of the crucified Christ, Bucky had moved the candles onto the floor. “I can't see you,” he'd complained, rearranging the church to worship Steve at the foot of the cross. Steve turned his face from the light, not wanting to be seen. God had tempted him and he had failed. He had let evil into the temple, and even now he tangled his fingers in Bucky's hair and tried to muffle his pleasure as they desecrated a house of God.

Bucky came almost every night, when he could, twisting like a serpent into Steve's arms. Faded blue eyes brightened when they kissed, and Bucky gave himself to Steve with a ferocity as awe-inspiring as any Biblical miracle. Bucky's bravery was the most beautiful thing Steve had ever seen, and he would have given anything for it. God had tested Steve, and Steve had fallen, but he could still keep the shadows from Bucky's eyes, could still make him laugh and gasp for air with Steve's name on his lips.

The only oil they had was for extreme unction. Steve hesitated, and Bucky drew a line of kisses back up his stomach and over his chest, lingering at the base of his throat. “Please, Stevie?” he whispered, and if he was already damned then what was there now but Bucky's happiness?

_Per istam sanctan unctionem et suam piissiman misericordiam. . .Through this Holy Unction, and through God's great mercy. . ._

Bucky's hands did not run over Steve's eyes and ears, but they did slip across his mouth before working down his chest, leaving the taste of oil in his mouth to mingle with the taste of Bucky's cigarettes.

_Indulgeat tibi Dominus quidquid. . .May God forgive you whatever sins thou hast committed . . ._

His hands slid, slippery down Steve's already weeping cock and then behind it, transgressing into an area Steve had never considered. Bucky did no more than rub gently with his anointed fingers while he kissed him with equal care. Steve could feel Bucky's skin brush the hairs on the inside of his thighs. He could feel Bucky's left hand move from his neck into his hair, scratching blunt fingernails against his scalp. He could feel every particle of dust-laden air, every time Bucky's finger pressed a little harder, until he was begging to fall, sobbing into Bucky's mouth and arching off the stone floor into oiled hands. Freewill meant man chose sin, chose death; and Steve chose Bucky.

_Nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae_

The next day he could not sit, could not walk without feeling his sin. The friars smiled, spoke of cold nights in the church and the mortification of the flesh. Steve nodded, but he could not look at the crucifix, and he had to stand in the confessional, listening to a litany of sins that could not match his own.

~*~

But it was not penance, not repentance. Not until December, not until his ordination was weeks away and it was all the church could talk about. The nave was hung with garlands, the advent candles were lit, and Steve spent his days trying to turn limited church resources into gifts for all the children who would go without. For all the children who had grown up without, who knew of care only in the breach. All those children from the Tenderloin district.

All the friars talked about his ordination, and all Bucky talked about was leaving New York. Getting out of this flea-ridden town, getting Steve out of that damn collar and starting a farm somewhere. His hands sketched out a farmhouse in the air, but Bucky had no more idea what went into a farm than Steve did. Bucky talked faster as the days grew shorter, words coming out frozen in the air, hanging around them like clouds of smoke. “Something's coming, Stevie,” he blew out into the space between them, nose red and dripping, eyes the color of the ice on the streets. “Something I don't like.”

Steve didn't limp, any more, but it was a good thing few of their parishioners asked for extreme unction. Bucky brought in an old wool blanket that smelled like beer, and Steve hid it in the lectern. Cold hands and chapped lips met in the dark and Steve said nothing about vows to anyone.

Then Father Kindall - too ill now to lead the mass, but still inordinately fond of the orphan he'd brought in – found him trying to organize the friary for Christmas dinner. “Stephen,” the old man grated, and Steve immediately hurried over and helped the priest to a chair. “Your mother left me something, that she made for you.” There was a burlap bag on the man's lap, hands shaking with age drew out a bundle of cloth. “Such high hopes, your mother had. And you're such a good boy, making them all come true.” He shook out the cloth, and a beautiful, full-length cassock draped over his thin knees. As long as it was, it had been sewn for the sickly boy Steve had been, and the frail man he should have grown up to be. Sewn by his mother. “Thought you could wear it, for the Christmas mass tomorrow,” Father Kindall offered, oblivious to how foolish Steve would appear.

The stitches were perfect, the kind of needlework Steve had watched his mother do in the mornings, when the light was good. He gathered if off Father Kindall's lap and brought it to his face, but it smelled only of burlap and age. “Thank you,” he managed, and ran for the only sanctuary he knew, his mother's hope for his future in his hands.

~*~

When Bucky came that night, Steve was standing in front of the altar, still holding the cassock wrapped around his hands. One of the friars had left the electric light near the crucifix on. It must have been installed when Steve had been away at seminary – he'd never even noticed it was there. Bucky was wearing his overcoat and a fedora Steve had never seen, his face too red on his cheeks and nose, dark bruises under his eyes. He had a knapsack in one hand, but he left the gun by the door. Steve stared blankly at him, and didn't move to free his hands from his mother's last gift as Bucky moved hesitantly up the aisle.

In the electric light, Bucky's eyes were more gray than blue, his voice flatter. “You're not coming, are you?” he said, and it didn't seem right. Evil was supposed to tempt Steve – tempt him to run his lips over the chafed, red skin on Bucky's hands, tempt him to bury his face in a coat that smelled like tobacco and exhaust and gunpowder instead of age and must – tempt him, not refuse him. Bucky was supposed to show Steve all the kingdoms of the world, not stand there with his knapsack and hope fading from his eyes. Bucky's hands, always so steady, were shaking. Or perhaps Steve's vision was blurred. Maybe it was the electric light.

“I'm preaching the mass tomorrow. And there's a dinner. And the children are expecting -”

“Right. St. Stephen, the martyr.” Bucky drew in a few choked, angry breaths, bit down hard on his lip. Steve couldn't meet his eyes. Steve had forsaken God, but his congregation had not forsaken him. Everyone knew that Steve was meant to be a priest. Everyone except Bucky.

“Please, Steve.” The lips were cool against his jaw, but the words Bucky breathed against his skin were warm. “Come with me. Give me a reason to stay. Please.” And the Devil himself had never been so beautiful, or fit so well in Steve's arms. Had never tempted Jesus by offering all of himself. The Devil himself wasn't as brave as Bucky.

Steve turned his head away and did not exhale until the heavy wooden door had slammed shut, until it was safe to look back and realize that the knapsack was still on the floor a few feet away. When he finally managed to swallow, it tasted like ashes in his mouth.

~*~

The next morning, Steve went out onto the street. One of the friars was ringing the church bells, and people were smiling in the streets, looking up instead of scowling at their feet and hurrying on. He was still holding the knapsack; the cassock he must have left draped over one of the pews. He stopped the first newsboy he saw, tried to pay him, but the boy ducked his head and wouldn't take the money. “Here you go, Father. Merry Christmas. Didja hear about the shootout in Brooklyn? One of Lepke's boys got shot taking out a Maranzano. My brother says -”

Steve walked away before the boy finished. He didn't need to read the paper. His God had always been more just than kind. Steve had chosen God, and God had removed the temptation. Had taken slender fingers and kisses more intoxicating than wine and sent them to – Except Steve had done that. Freewill meant Steve had chosen, and by choosing he had damned the man he . . .

_Two dollars for a pardon? Three, to get out of purgatory a little quicker?_

Steve kept walking. Away from the church bells, away from the men and women streaming in for the mass, for the children hoping for toys and perhaps a sweet. Away from the watchful eyes of the Christ and ghost of a touch, of a man pressing into him beneath the altar, lips whispering love that seemed to match any he had been offered. Steve walked.

~*~

The last mass in the Holy Innocents' church had been hours ago, and the elderly priest had only come back to gather up the chalice for washing, and the candlesticks for polishing. He had not planned to find a blond young man crouched in front of the old baptismal font, forehead pressed to the plaster, fingers clenched around the empty basin. It had been a long time since he'd been asked to baptize anyone, since anyone had come seeking a new life in Christ.

_I wasn't always this sinful, Stevie. My pa baptized me, or so they told me. Little church called the Holy Innocents', somewhere out in Brooklyn. I probably cracked their font._

The blond man must have sensed him, but didn't look up, too busy running his hands through holy water that wasn't there. “What are you looking for, boy?” he asked shortly, moving close enough to see the man's black shirt and white collar, but not close enough to see the tears brightening vivid blue eyes.

_We can start over, Stevie. Somewhere out west. You can have your God – you can have anything you want, I guess. You can even wear all those black robes._

The old priest asked one more time, but even so, he could barely hear the answer. The young man was pressed too close to the font, breathing white frost onto chipped plaster and old stones.

_What are you looking for?_

“Absolution.”

**Author's Note:**

> First, please let me know if you catch historical inaccuracies. I read a bit on this era, but really made a lot up. I took one church location and gave it another church's name and friar association, partly because I'd rather not impute this to any actual church. (Hopefully no disrespect to the Catholic church or religion in general came across, Steve's tortured point of view aside.)
> 
> Bucky, as one might have guessed, is a gangster. He works for the National Crime Syndicate under "Lepke" Buchalter, and they're pretty much paid hitmen for organized crime. (Which seemed so absurdly perfect for Bucky that I had to bring it in.)
> 
> I doubt Steve would actually be acting as a priest before he took the vows, but it made sense for the story. Equally dubious is my Latin, which is all from the internet.


End file.
